Psychology 368: Autobiographical Memory
Thought Paper Prompts
Back to:    schedule
If I believe these data are valid:
  • What does that tell us about how memories are represented in the brain?
  • What does it tell us about how we remember events from the past?
  • What does that tell us about the relationship between memory and personality or language or culture or emotion?
  • What does that tell us about the origins of autobiographical memory?
  • What does that tell us about nature vs. nurture?
  • What does that tell us about how memory develops over the lifespan?
  • What does that tell us about how memory influences perception of the world or other people?
  • What does that tell us about how we communicate about ourselves to ourselves and/or to others?
If I believe this theory:
  • (Same questions as above)
  • What is the next logical experiment we should run?
  • Is this theory compatible with other theories we have discussed?
    • How does it improve upon earlier theories? Or not?
  • Is this theory compatible with your intuitions?
  • Is this theory specific to the kinds of stimuli that were used?
    • How well does it apply to music in the real world?
This experiment is flawed because:

Caution: be careful when critiquing an experimental design. If your 'fix' wouldn't change the outcome of the experiment, it might not be a flaw. For example: they only had college students in the experiment. OK, why would you expect a different population to perform differently and what would that difference tell you about autobiographical memory?
  • It failed to control for an important variable.
  • It did not include an important variable.
  • It confounded two important variables.
  • The subject population was too restricted/not restricted enough.
  • Its operational definition of a key construct was flawed.
  • The theory that the experiment was designed to support will not generalize to other situations because...